Over the weekend, I turned off Apple Music and it took large
chunks of my purchased music with it. Sadly, many of the songs
were added from CDs years ago that I no longer have access to.
Looking at my old iTunes Match library, before Apple Music, I’m
missing about 4,700 songs. At this point, I just don’t care
anymore, I just want Apple Music off my devices.

I trusted my data to Apple and they failed. I also failed by not
backing up my library before installing Apple Music. I will not
make either of those mistakes again.

Apple needs to address some of these major issues in Apple Music,
particularly those related to usability and syncing across
devices. Hopefully, a major patch will release with iOS 9,
Apple's new mobile software expected to launch in September.

But until Apple Music sees some huge changes, there's no
reason to suffer through your three-month free trial of the
service. Not when you could do much, much better, for the same
monthly price (once your free trial ends).

It's a little app called Spotify.

Despite Apple's standing
in the tech world, Spotify is the true heavyweight when it comes
to music streaming.Dave
Smith/Business Insider

Here are a few reasons why Spotify is better than
Apple Music right now:

Exploring and discovering new music is actually fun,
since it's much easier to find music that fits your mood or
style. No more random "introductions" to this artist
you may or may not know. You won't see a disorganized mess of
random albums when you click on the "For You" tab. No more
relying on those pink bubbles with artists you might like, or
that recommendation system where you have to "love" or
"favorite" any song to inform the recommendation engine. Simply
visit the "browse" option and get going, it couldn't be any
simpler.

Spotify has a much better system for getting your music
on and off your devices. Find any music you're
looking for — be it a song, an album, an artist, or an entire
playlist — and you can add it to your saved music with a single
click of a button. You can also instantly add it to a playlist,
and if that playlist is toggled for "offline listening," all
you need to do is launch Spotify on any device and you'll see
those songs magically download. Apple Music's system is
similar, but here's the most important difference: It's
extremely easy to see which songs, albums and playlists are
available offline. In Apple Music, it's common that you won't
see your albums appear in playlists on other devices until you
toggle the "Show Music Available Offline" option, which is
hidden in a menu under "My Music." Everything should just work
as it does on Spotify. Take notes, Apple!

Everything is intuitive. If you click on any
artist or album, you'll be taken right to their catalog; not so
on Apple Music. There's one sidebar with all your music,
playlists, and menu options. Apple Music's menu options make it
difficult to find what you're looking for on your first click:
Maybe what you're looking for is under "My Music," or perhaps
it's in "For You," or "New." And when you add music to Spotify,
nothing gets lost. In Apple Music, it's common to have several
tracks of an album suddenly missing for no reason at all.

Spotify Premium is far more intuitive than Apple
Music.Mobile
Syrup

For these above reasons and so many more, Spotify Premium should
be the obvious choice when it comes to music streaming. Of
course, everyone wanted to give Apple Music a fair shake,
considering Apple is the biggest tech company in the world and
its previous inventions — the iPod and the iTunes Store —
transformed how we buy and enjoy music. But at the moment, it's
Spotify, not Apple, that demonstrates it understands how people
want to enjoy music.

Spotify's interface is intuitive, the playlists are unique and
easy to find, and even the social features — you can see what
your friends are listening to and share your listening experience
with others — are leagues better than Apple's "Connect"
feature, which encourages artists to share content like they
would on Twitter or Instagram. "Connect" is almost a clone of
Apple's defunct social network called "iTunes Ping" that
debuted in 2010, but there's a reason Ping was a failure: It
didn't understand what music listeners want. This is where Apple
Music, as a whole, needs to improve.